“These motions everywhere in nature must surely be the circulations of God. The flowing sail, the running stream, the waving tree and the roving wind—whence else their infinite health and freedom. I can see nothing so proper and holy as unrelaxed play and frolic in this bower God has built for us. The suspicion of sin never comes to this thought. Oh if men felt this way they would never build temples even of marble or diamond, but it would be sacrilege and profane, but disport them forever in this paradise.” ~ On Man & Nature
Thoreau’s attentive eye and beholding spirit to the beauty of creation, “this paradise,” is a timely an necessary rebuke for entertainment-numbed moderns. Instead of observing, reflecting and pondering the circulations of nature, the various movements in water, air and earth, we opt for movies that use these things as mere wallpaper for dramatic and violent stories filled with manipulated images of men and women. When we pause to reflect, we reflect on pre-packaged images not organic, eternal ones around us.
Of course, most of the time we don’t reflect at all. We cling to hurriedness like syrup on pancakes, though not nearly as sweet. We miss the circulations of God for the slick advertisements of men. Thoreau is right, there is something proper and holy, orderly and divine about the gaiety and grandeur of nature. Which is precisely why Scripture reminds us that the whole world is a temple; heaven in His throne and earth is his footstool. As Calvin put it, a veritable theatre of his glory.